Simulacra of the hyperreal fantasy world in the novel by clifford simak “out of their minds"

Abstract

The article under studies is an intertextual analysis of a minor novel by American science fiction writer Clifford Simak (1904–1988) “Out of Their Minds” (1970), which eclectically combines the elements of a fairy-tale, dreams and phantasmagoric narrative, transgressing into the quasi-real space through the images of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. The significance of the research has been stipulated by the growing interest of Ukrainian translators and literary critics in the creative activities of C. Simak, as well as by the lack of intertextual analyses of the writer’s classical texts. The objective of the paper is to outline the specifics of modelling a hyperreal fantasy world in the novel by C. Simak “Out of Their Minds” through a number of intertextual simulative forms that carry out “reversal of the imaginary” (the term by Jean Baudrillard) in practice. Methodology: the analysis of C. Simak’s text in the aspect of post-non-classical philosophy and methodology of intertextuality. Conclusions. C. Simak’s text under analysis indicates that fantastic can be combined with mystical, oneiric, phantasmagoric, grotesque and even carnival elements. Their semantic essence is emphasized by the intertextual nature of the personospere samples, devised by the author. The reminiscent origin of a transitive personopair Don Quixote – Sancho Panza is very indicative in the plot of the novel “Out of Their Minds”. C. Simak offers a specific analogy-ideologeme between the character of Horton Smith and Don Quixote-simulacrum, which functions exceptionally in imaginative dimensions of his memory. Such a metagenre aspect of fantasy requires a peculiar palimpsest, filled with numerous interpretants and simulacra of the hyperreal world